There's been a recent (over about the last 30-40 years) for the broadcasters and newspapers to each carry one April fool story on 1st April and wait to see if it was spotted. I understand that this year the BBC banned any such broadcast, which is a shame because some were so implausible that people did believe them - probably the most famous being the story about harvesting spaghetti from spaghetti trees in Italy broadcast on one of the BBCs most serious programmes in the days before spaghetti was common in the UK.
Shortly before the Channel Tunnel was opened one newspaper had a story about the discovery of a couple of miles of an abandoned Victorian attempt at at an under channel tunnel. That fooled so many because it was possible, that a retraction had to be printed the following day. Name changes by the EU (in theory) would be something they'd think about because they do come up with some really daft ideas, but other European countries speak a different language and wouldn't necessarily realise the gender inference in place names, just as English speakers wouldn't recognise gender-related words in, say, German place names. So I'd immediately recognise this as an April fool. Jean in Poole To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
